Six TU students share part of their freshman year
Peer Mentor Jenna Chan ‘27
“My roommate and I met on Roommate Finder. We were like a match made in heaven. We even met up before school started. We were super tight, and it was so perfect. And then, toward the end of the semester, some roommate conflicts happened. Our cleanliness habits started to… I should not air her dirty laundry, but we started to drift apart and then, you know, it just wasn’t the same anymore.
“And then, after Homecoming, she tells me that she wants to try to move out. Long story short, she ends up moving out. It’s all said and done. It’s fine. We’re cool. But then I come back from winter break and something’s off. Most importantly, my hand soap was gone. I don’t know why my hand soap was gone. My sweatpants were gone. My Nike Pros were gone. And the most random of all, my laundry basket was gone.
“I had to be like, ‘Hey, I don’t want to buy another laundry basket.’ I was already broke as is. I asked her, ‘Hey, there’s some stuff missing from my dorm. Is there any way you could return?’ I wanted to be calm, cool and casual. And she was like, ‘Yeah, of course I’ll return it to you. It definitely got mixed up in the moveout and some stuff just went with me.’
“But I don’t know. Something about it is off because that laundry basket was on my side of the bed. It was on my side of the room. So, moral of the story, I got my laundry basket back, but at what cost? Ever since then I’ve had great roommates. So don’t let your freshman roommate discourage you.”
Honors Student Cooper Terrill ‘27
“My freshman year living in Hardesty, one of my friends went to the store, and I guess milk was on sale. And they were like, ‘Oh yeah, I love milk,’ and bought three of them for the tiny little dorm mini fridge. We had three gallons of milk and did not drink a drop of it. And then, the day it was going to expire, we realized that there were three gallons of milk in the fridge we had to get rid of. A bunch of us went door-to-door, knocking on people’s dorm rooms, like, ‘Do you want milk?’ And going through the hallway, someone spilled an entire cup of milk all over the floor. It just ended up rotting for the rest of the year. People still talk about it. It was pretty pungent.”
Fraternity Member Tyler Kelkar ‘28
“I went to Michigan State my first year, and I lived about an hour away from campus. I would go home on the weekends to hang out with friends and family. After this one particular weekend, it was a Monday morning, and I got ready, got all my stuff, and me and my mom drove all the way back to Michigan State. I checked my car when we got there just to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. I forgot my computer.
“I was freaking out because I wasn’t sure where it was. I checked all my bags. Then, my dad called me and told me it was at home. So me and my mom drove all the way back home — an hour away — to get my computer. To make things worse, my parents had a very important meeting that day. They made me take a Greyhound all the way back to campus, which basically took the whole day. I missed all my classes that day.”
Band Member Ava Fix ‘29
“I am a student in the Sound of the Golden Hurricanes, which is our school’s marching band. On my very first day of band practice I did not know where I was supposed to report to. The building I was supposed to go to is called the Music Annex and I did not know what the Music Annex was, let alone where to find it on campus. I ended up frantically walking around with my clarinet about five minutes before rehearsal, trying to see if other people looked like they were in the band too. After a while I asked for directions.
“In the future to prevent this from happening, a really helpful tool is the Safe UTulsa app. It gives you directions for wherever you are on campus to any building you may need to go to. But don’t worry. You will get so familiar with where everything is on campus that you’ll be the one giving the directions to the frantic freshman trying to find her way to band on the first day. Good luck.”
Collegian Managing Editor Ally Jones ‘28
“My freshman year, I shared a dorm with one person. We didn’t have suitemates because they made us share a room, even though we didn’t have someone in our other suite. One day, I came back from class and found our entire floor completely flooded. And I go in, and the shower is running. My roommate is trying to mop up water with the shower running still. I guess she didn’t understand that her hair would clog the shower drain over time, so she was never cleaning it out. And she thought that if she took the hair off the top of the drain, it would stop the shower from flooding. So she didn’t turn off the shower when it started flooding.
“So our entire bedroom, bathroom and the suite room that was locked got flooded. We had to lay out fans for the entire day and use all our towels. It was a pain. And I ended up being the one to clean out the drain.”
Student Government Association President Bruce Bigler ‘27
“About two weeks into freshman year I decided that my dorm needed a pet. I lived in Hardesty so I got a little, tiny dwarf hamster. We named it Sprinkles. Sprankles, if we’re being specific. Sprankles was the mascot my whole freshman year. She went with me everywhere. I got a little ball that she could roll around campus in, and we dyed her pink — that was a great adventure.
“But one night she was in her cage, and then when I woke up the next morning, she was not in her cage. We scoured our entire apartment and could not find her anywhere. We went to sleep — no hamster. Woke up the next morning and I open the door to my bathroom and there Sprankles was, just sitting there looking beautiful.
“That pattern continued throughout my freshman year. She would go two weeks in her cage and then jump out. I could never figure out how, so finally, I up my camera and waite. Come to find out, she learned how to climb to the top of her wheel and jump off and escape into the unknown. We got her a bigger cage, but now Sprinkles is a dog. I’m on Sprinkles version two in my apartment, and she is also a chiller.”
